Not All Eggs are the Same: How to Choose Wisely

The Many Benefits of the Acai Berry

The Acai berry is a small and round berry that is purple in color that comes from the acai palm tree. It is about the size of a small grape. They start off being dark green in color, but as they mature their color changes to a dark purple. The taste of the acai berry is a mixture of chocolate blended with a variety of berries.

The Acai berry is highly concentrated with antioxidants and therefore have many benefits. Aside from that, they also contain monounsaturated fats, dietary fiber, phytosterols, and the necessary amino acids. With that being said, there are a plethora of benefits to be gained from the Acia berry.

Health Benefits of the Acai Berry: 

• Contains antioxidants, minerals, and vitamins that are good for your health and can help to prevent diseases
• Contains many polyphenolic anthocyanin compounds and pro-anthocyanidin tannins that are said to be anti-aging, anti-inflammatory, and anti-cancer compounds
• Contains fatty acids that reduce LDL cholesterol levels, raise HDL cholesterol levels, and help to prevent heart disease
• Contains fiber that will help to remove cholesterol
• Contains potassium, manganese, copper, iron, and magnesium; all of which aid in controlling the heart rate as well as blood pressure
• Contains vitamin B, vitamin B6, vitamin K, niacin, and riboflavin; all of which are helpful in the metabolism of carbohydrates, fats, and proteins

The Acai Berry Being Used in Medicine:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

5 Sugar Free Gum (Rain)

I chew a lot of gum, so I have to buy something long-lasting. I’m currently addicted to Stride, as I can chew the same piece for 45 minutes or longer without feeling like the taste is gone. I can’t just stick to one thing though – I like to try other options to see if there’s something better out there. 5 sugar free gum is advertised as a gum that will “stimulate your senses,” which sounded pretty good to me. With flavors like Cobalt, Flare, and Rain, I was eager to see what the taste was like, so I picked up a pack of 5 (Rain) Sugar Free Gum for $1.69 a pack.

The “Rain” gum is a spearmint flavor and each package has 15 pieces of gum in it (which is one more than in my packs of Stride). I have to say, this spearmint rendering is quite a bit sweeter than Stride’s. It’s nice, and a good change of pace, but it took a little time for the flavor to grow on me. But alas, the flavor went away after a too short a time (~15-20 minutes) and I was left with gross gum flavor.

Each piece has 5 calories, 2 grams of sugar alcohols, and nothing else.

… There’s more. Continue reading ’5 Sugar Free Gum (Rain)’…

Trident Minty Sweet Twist Gum

I’ve been on a big gum-trying kick recently, and Trident has become my go-to brand – I really like Trident Tropical Twist Gum. Last time I popped into a nearby corner store, I spotted Trident Minty Sweet Twist and decided to try it.

This gum is so flavorful, it’s amazing. It reminds me of mint chocolate chip ice cream and it’s just the right combination of sweet and minty. It seems to me that each piece of Trident is smaller than other brands of gum, but for that trade-off there are 18 pieces in a pack. The other downside: this gum doesn’t last nearly as long as Stride.

Xylitol, the sweetener used in this gum, is supposed to help fight cavities. Plus each piece of Trident Minty Sweet Twist Gum provides only 3.5 calories and so sugars. So this is a guilt-free, teeth-cleansing way to get your after-dinner minty fix.

… There’s more. Continue reading ‘Trident Minty Sweet Twist Gum’…

Summer Fest: A Celebration of Slow-Roasted Tomatoes

The Summer Fest theme this week is tomatoes and I can’t think of a better thing to talk about than slow-roasted tomatoes.  I made these for the first time last September and they were absolutely amazing.  Although I made them a few more times throughout the year with grocery store cherry tomatoes, I’ve been waiting for some good summer tomatoes to roast.

Yesterday I roasted a tray of 20 gorgeous Roma tomatoes that I had picked up at the Saturday Farmer’s Market.  It took all day, but the end result was fantastic.  I can’t believe I’m admitting this, but I ate about 15 of those tomatoes for dinner last night.  I just kept picking them off the tray as they were cooling.  My name is Nicole and I ate 15 Roma tomatoes in one night!  Now you know why you aren’t seeing photos of slow-roasted Roma tomatoes… I ate them before I could photograph them.

But I also roasted a pan of cherry tomatoes since I didn’t have enough Romas to fill two pans.  If you’re going to have the oven on all day anyway, you really should fill all the racks with tomatoes.  I managed to eat at least a handful of the cherry tomatoes, too.  I know what you’re thinking.  But you’ll understand once you make some yourself.  You should do that.

How to Make Slow-Roasted Cherry Tomatoes

And here are some more links to help you along your tomato-roasting journey.  These bloggers won’t steer you wrong.  You need to do this!

Instructions for Slow-Roasting Tomatoes:

• Slow-Roasted Tomatoes at Stephen Cooks
• Slow-Roasted Tomatoes at A Veggie Venture
• How to Make Slow-Roasted Tomatoes at Kalyn’s Kitchen
• Slow-Roasted Tomatoes at Smitten Kitchen
• Slow-Roasted Tomatoes with Sea Salt and Ground Coriander at Orangette
• Slow-Roasted Tomatoes at Andrea’s Recipes

What to do with Slow-Roasted Tomatoes:

• Pasta Salad with Slow-Roasted Tomatoes, Grilled Zucchini, and Basil at Kalyn’s Kitchen
• Slow-Roasted Tomato Bruschetta at The Perfect Pantry
• Slow-Roasted Tomato Hummus at Andrea’s Recipes
• Slow-Roasted Tomato Sauce at The Kitchn
• Slow-Roasted Tomato Soup at A Veggie Venture

Other Summer Fest Attendees Celebrating Tomatoes:

• Gluten-Free Girl and the Chef: Heirloom Tomato Tart with Parmesan Crust
• Alison at Food2: Heirloom tomatoes
• The FN Dish: Tyler’s Ultimate Tomato Salads
• Margaret at A Way to Garden: More than one way to ripen a tomato
• Gilded Fork: Celebrating summer lusciousness with a tomato dossier and recipes
• Diane and Todd at White on Rice Couple: Sun-dried tomatoes (actually made in the sun!)
• Paige at The Sister Project: 3 substantial, healthy, vegetarian tomatoey main dishes
• Liz at the Cooking Channel: Easy Tomato Tart
• Kelly at Just a Taste: Tomato Jam
• Alexis at Food Network UK: The seven deadly tomato sins
• Michelle at Healthy Eats: Top 10 Things to Do With Tomatoes
• Marilyn at Simmer Till Done: Cherry Tomato & Maytag Blue Beignets
• Alana at Eating From the Ground Up: Roasted Green Salsa (green zebras and tomatillos), and how late August makes her hurt for New Mexico
• Tigress in a Pickle: Over 50 ways to preserve tomatoes in jars
• Cate at Sweetnicks: A Loaded Bowl (filled with brown rice, Jersey fresh tomatoes, buttery avocados and more deliciousness)
• Caron at San Diego Foodstuff: Chunky Garden Gazpacho with Flowered Corn Tortillas and Melissa Clark’s Tomato Tarte Tatin

How You Can Join in Summer Fest 2010

Have a recipe or tip that fits any of our weekly themes? Starting with our posts of Wednesday, July 28, for five Wednesdays, you can contribute in various ways, big or small.

Contribute a whole post, or a comment—whatever you wish. It’s meant to be fun, viral, fluid. No pressure, just delicious. Simply leave your tip or recipe or favorite links in the comments below a Summer Fest post on my blog, and then go visit my collaborators and do the same.

The cross-blog event idea works best when you leave your recipe or favorite links (whether to your own blog or someone else’s) at all the host blogs. Yes, copy and paste them everywhere! That way, they are likely to be seen by the widest audience. Everyone benefits, and some pretty great dialog starts simmering.

Or think bigger: Publish entire posts of your own, if you wish, and grab the juicy Summer Fest 2010 tomato badge (illustrated by Matt of Mattbites.com).

Summer Fest 2010 Posting Schedule

7/28: Cukes and Zukes
8/4: Corn
8/11: Herbs, Greens, and Beans
8/18: Stone Fruit – I missed this one!
8/25: Tomatoes

Eating More Food In Order To Lose More Pounds

Here is a tip for all of you dieters out there, eat something. If you really want to lose weight, then eat. When you do not eat, you affect your metabolic rate in a negative way. Your metabolic rate has a great deal to do with how fast you will gain or lose weight. It triggers your system as to how fast or how slow to produce energy necessary to maintain you in order for you to survive.

Five Myths About “Light” Foods

How many grapefruit you must eat to convince that they don’t help you lose weight? How many spaghetti must be denied to you to realize that the real problem doesn’t lie there? Forget the myths you know and learn the whole truth: you don’t put on weight if you eat before you sleep. As long as you eat lightly.

Myth: Grapefruit, lemon and celery are fat soluble.
Fact: There are no fat-soluble food. These foods are indeed low in calories, but if you eat enough of them you may even increase your weight.

Myth: With every meal you should eat certain food combinations. Eg meat with vegetables instead of potatoes or rice, as the body can not correctly process different types of food simultaneously, resulting in weight gain.
Fact: Your digestive system is fully capable at any moment to process, absorb and store all kind of food. There are no combinations of food that ‘fatten’ you. What ‘fattens’ you is eating more calories than you need. Ofcourse a meal with meat and salad has fewer calories than the same amount of meat accompanied by potatoes. But when you eat a meal containing all the food groups mathcing your needs in both amount and calories, you are not likely to increase your weight.

Myth: If you want to “lose” your belly, do abs.
Fact: Unfortunately, you can not control where to lose weight. The abs will help you train your abdominal muscles, but if you do not cut down calories then the fat in the abdominal area will remain and your ribbed abs won’t be admired by ay one. The good news is that the combination of diet and physical activity (aerobic exercise and muscle strengthening exercises) accelerate the process of weight loss and results in a pretty and tight body. Furthermore, the systematic walking motions (‘burns’) the fat accumulated in the abdomen, while reducing the risk of cardiovascular disease and diabetes.

Myth: Carbohydrates ‘fatten’.
Fact: Increased consumption of calories, independent from their source, cause weight gain. In contrast to what is said for low-carbohydrate diets (low-carb diets), carbohydrates do not promote fat storage or cause insulin resistance. Moreover, people who follow low-carbohydrate diets lose weight temporarily, but one year after they have gained their lost weight and often weigh even more.

Myth: Eating before sleep ‘fattens’ you
Fact: The important thing is whtat you eat and not when you eat. Calories have the same effect on your body regardless of the time consumed. Reasearch has shown that eating regular meals, especially breakfast, helps in weight loss and even more when the meals are low in fat and avoid snacking between them.

Five Super Muscle Foods

Even novice trainees know that a diet rich in protein helps for the maximum muscle growth, improves metabolism and in combination with reduced intake of fat and carbohydrates can be a catalyst in reducing body fat.
After any form of vigorous exercise a certain number of muscle fibers is destroyed. To reconstruct them again, you must take a sufficient amount of protein in the post-lunch of your exercise, and a certain amount of carbohydrates in order to compensate your muscle glycogen, which also decreases after intense exercise. To sum it up, a meal rich in protein and carbohydrates is the ideal choice.

There is no reason to resort to the easy and often expensive option of protein supplements. Nature has… foreseen this problem, giving us a wide variety of foods that exceed the needs of our protein. Here the five “most valuable” are distinguished.

“Fresh fish! Get your fresh fish here!!”
The “king” of protein foods, stands in first place of our choices for several reasons. Except that it contains a sufficient amount of protein (about 20% per 100 grams) and almost no fat, is equally rich in “famous” nutrients you look for every day in your diet, meaning the famous omega-3, vitamin D, iodine and a lot more. Fish also help reducing your cholesterol and the nutritional substances provide protection to the red blood cells. For higher nutrient content, choose salmon, tuna, sardines, anchovies and cod fillet.

Run like a chicken (and then eat it!)
Many things are said about this bird. If there were no fish, then it would have deserved the first place in our list of protein foods. A “dry” portion of one hundred grams gives you about thirty grams of high quality protein (which is 100% absorbed by the body) with only four grams of fat – this if you remove the skin and cook on the grill. It may not have the nutrients of red meat, but it certainly excels in terms of total cholesterol. Not to mention its excellent taste, which fits with everything: salads, pasta, rice, potatoes, etc.

“Easter Bunny bring me eggs!”
It’s quick and easy to cook, delicious and can be eaten at any time as a snack or main meal. Each medium egg contains about seven grams of protein with the ???? and five grams without it, giving you about sixty calories. It is considered to provide proteins of high biological value, so it is a measure of comparison and evaluation for all the other foods in concern for their protein content. It is also a good source of selenium, iodine and vitamin B2 (riboflavin) and also contains molybdenum, vitamin B12, pantothenic acid and vitamin D. Its only minus is the high content of cholesterol, which does not affect significantly the total cholesterol in blood, if you follow a careful diet.

‘‘Got milk?’’
There isn’t anybody who doesn’t have ‘‘painful’’ memories of the time his mother and grandmother made him to drink his whole milk. If you knew then how nutritious milk is, it would be more likely to… order a second glass. The protein found in milk (casein) has a very high biological value and has the ability to be absorbed slowly from the body, thus “feeding” the muscles for a long time. Even peptides derived from casein enhance the body’s natural defense when you train and regulate proper blood pressure.

“She has the most beautiful almond eyes…”
Even if it sound nuts, nuts like almonds are rich in protein. A handful of almonds gives you about eight grams of protein – nearly two grams more than an egg and it contains a significant amount of magnesium and calcium, two minerals necessary in many operational processes of the body including muscle constraction and heart function. Finally, note that almonds are high in dietary fiber, which is important for regulating the absorption of lipids and glucose in blood, as well as the proper functioning of the colon.

Better Eyesight Diet

The food best for your eyes’ health are those containing the two carotenoid antioxidants, lutein and zeaxanthin. The reason is why these two antioxidants, especially zeaxanthin, are a big part of the chemical components of the macular retina.

• Foods that are high in these nutrients are:

1. Red grapes
2. Orange peppers
3. Squashes
4. Pumpkins
5. Corn
6. Eggs
7. Spinach
8. Celery
9. Broccoli
10. Leaf lettuce
11. Cabbage
12. Parsley
13. Peas
14. Brussels sprouts
15. Turnips

• Other foods that you should include in your diet are:

1. Raw cabbage
2. Papaya
3. Mango
4. Sweet potato
5. Red peppers
6. Swiss chard
7. Tomatoes
8. Melon (variety of cantaloupe)
9. Lettuce
10. Carrots
11. Cauliflower
12. Sunflower seeds
13. Cardamom

• Drinking fresh carrot juice can help you to prevent some eyesight problems.

• Taking two tablespoons of cod liver oil on daily base may also prove very useful.

The Perfect BreakFast

How does breakfast affect the human organism?

Energy source from breakfast:

When we sleep during the night our body still needs energy even if it is in a state of sleep. Especially our brain needs glucose which is a form of carbohydrate. Our organism obtains carbohydrates from meals and snacks we eat during the day, storing them in the form of glycogen in our muscles and liver.

During the night, our organism turns glycogen in glucose and uses it as a source of energy, like a fuel, for its needs. For this reason, eating breakfast is essential to restore the glycogen reserves which will be necessary for our morning activities.

Metabolism affected:

Breakfast allows metabolism to sustain the rapid changes that are necessary for our morning doings.

After each meal, there is an increase in the oxygen engagement due to the fact that the ingestion and digestion of the food requires more energy from our body. At the same time this procedure comes along with the production of heat, known as the thermic effect of food.

During the night, when we are asleep, our metabolism slows down. But when we eat breakfast a while after we get up, then the metabolism starts off with more east, accelerates and allows us to activate a lot faster and more effectively.

Fat reduction

Research has shown that people, who do not eat breakfast, tend to eat greasy food during the rest of the day. Also during the rest of the morning they seem to prefer eating snacks rich in fat.

Breakfast is the perfect way to give our organism a lot of the necessary nutrients needed during the day. Research has shown that people who eat breakfast, tend to have a more balanced diet, poorer in fat and richer in carbohydrates, in compatre with the ones that skip their breakfast.

Including cereal in your breakfast, which is rich in carbohydrate and poor in fat, a feeling of fullness is created avoiding this way that strong need for snacks during the morning.

Also enhanced cereal include important vitamins like vitamin B (necessary for energy production) and iron (necessary for blood production and especially hemoglobin)

Milk is a rich source of protein, vitamin B like riboflavin and vitamin B12. It also includes important inorganic substances that are needed by our organism, such as magnesium, spelter and calcium which is necessary for healthy bones and teeth.

Moreover let us not forget that eating whole grains, offers many advantages in general health. Research has shown that people have less risk for heart diseases and certain cancer forms by eating more wholemeal products. Also, a diet rich in fibre allows a better functioning of the digestive system with less risk of constipation.
The breakfast is the most good and easy ways to supply the body with calcium. Drinking milk, putting milk in your cereal to eat or eating yogurt can cover more than half of the daily needs of your body for calcium.

Research is also been done to show if there is a connection between iron and intelligence (IQ). Some research did show that. The engagement of iron holds a great deal, especially for young women. Breakfast is the best opportunity to load ourselves with iron. Wholemeal cereal and wholemeal bread contain iron. In addition to that, a glass of orange juice will provide us with vitamin C which helps absorbing iron not coming from meat.

Breakfast facts
? Some research shows that academic performance is increased significantly after an energy-rich breakfast.

? Glucose levels are reduced during sleep. When you wake up, these levels need some time to rise. Low blood sugar has been connected with poor memory, difficulty with concentration and learning.

? Eating breakfast increases blood glucose levels and allows our body to function normally.

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